BOOK VI.
I.
Such were the mutually threatening dispositions of France and Europe at the moment when the Constituted Assembly, after having proclaimed its principles, left to others to defend and apply them; like the legislator who retires into private life, thence to watch the effect and the working of his laws.

The great idea of France abdicated, if we may use the expression, with the Constituted Assembly; and the government fell from its high position into the hands of the inexperience or the impulses of a new people.

From the 29th of September to the 1st of October, there seemed to be a new reign: the Legislative Assembly found themselves on that day face to face with a king who, destitute of authority, ruled over a people destitute of moderation.

They felt on their first sitting the oscillation of a power without a counterpoise, that seeks to balance itself by its own wisdom, and changing from insult to repentance, wounds itself with the weapon that has been placed in its grasp.
II.
An immense crowd had attended the first sittings; the exterior aspect of the Assembly had entirely changed; almost all the white heads had disappeared, and it seemed as though France had become young again in the course of a night.

The expression of the physiognomies, the gestures, the attire of the members of the Assembly were no longer the same; that pride of the French noblesse, visible alike in the look and bearing; that dignity of the clergy and the magistrates; that austere gravity of the deputies of the _Tiers etat_ had suddenly given place to the representatives of a new people, whose confusion and turbulence announced rather the invasion of power than the custom and the possession of supreme power.